North Columbia Elementary School students attended a ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday morning to officially open their newest playground set.

The Cruisin the Caspian playset, was purchased for $16,000 through the school's annual Boosterthon fundraising event, according to the school's principal Tonya Gambrell.

"It started with the children, they wanted a new playground. So we decided with our Boosterthon, that's our largest fundraiser all school year, that we would put the proceeds from Boosterhon towards the playground and then we would continue to add on to whatever our profit we made," Gambrell said. "The children's excitedment is what happened that made the whole community come together and bring in enough funds to buy this new playground."

The new set replaced the school's 25-year-old set that was in desperate need of a replacement.

Gambrell added that after a final inspection Tuesday before the ribbon cutting, the opening of the playground was a success. It was also a fitting beginning to the start of the school's 60th anniversary as the oldest school in Columbia County, Gambrell added.

Each year, the school adopts a new project that they put fundraiser earnings towards to better the school.

"We really try not to do too many fundraisers because the county provides us really with everything that we need, but you know sometimes there are just those little extras that you want to do," Gambrell said.

Last year, the school purchased four new laptops in their Laps for Laptop fundraiser and after the purchasing the playground set this year, Gambrell said the school has set its sights on modernizing the media center.

"We are working on changing our media center into a new state of the art learning commons and so we want to really just give it a makeover in there," Gambrell said. "The learning commons style is one in which the kids come in and do different projects, they collaborate with one another, kind of like a coffee shop atmosphere where the kids just really want to come and hang out and collaborate with our librarians."

Gambrell said that proceeds from the school's successful Daddy, Daughter Dance last week brought in some funds early so the school can go ahead and get started on the new learning commons.